In recent years, companies have begun performing operations and transactions across company boundaries, conducting business with external entities such as business partners, distribution centers, outsourcing companies, compliance auditors, banks, logistics providers, and others. For example, many business models have evolved from single enterprise business models into inter-connected and networked business models. As business models have begun to incorporate multiple entities, communication and interactions within the networked business model remains difficult, with each participant operating as a “black box,” receiving an input and returning an output for further use in the networked business process.
Business process modeling notation (BPMN) is a standard for business process modeling, and provides a graphical notification for specifying business processes in a Business Process Diagram (BPD), based on a flowcharting technique similar to activity diagrams from Unified Modeling Language (UML). In general, the objective of BPMN is to support business process management for both technical users and business users by providing a notation that is intuitive to business users, yet capable of representing complex process semantics. Further, the BPMN specification can provide a mapping between the graphics of the notation to the underlying constructs of execution languages, including Business Process Execution Language. Because BPMN is understandable by both technical and business users, networked business processes can be described using BPMN, providing a common point of understanding for users from different entities.